Galaxy J7 Pro

The Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro is a smartphone with great excellent battery life, good display, great design, and a decent camera. Launched in July 2017, the smartphone would be an all-rounder if it comes with a slightly lower price. 

When you put the Galaxy J7 Pro next to the Galaxy J7 Max, they seem to be illogical. You might wonder why J7 Pro, the more expensive one, has a smaller screen and lesser RAM. Well, the answer is that its storage capacity is higher. It has a bigger and better battery as well as a SAMOLED panel. The Pro is for the Indian, South East Asian, and Brazillian markets.

Display

For those who like watching movies, TV shows, and videos on their smartphones, they will need a display with high resolution, good color reproduction, and good viewing angles. With its SAMOLED panel, J7 Pro can achieve all that. If you don’t happen to be a purist, its slightly oversaturated colors sure look inviting.

High-resolution content from Netflix and Amazon Prime would look excellent. Moreover, Samsung’s is satisfyingly good at controlling sunlight as well as regular outdoor viewing. While this test seems fairly easy for most budget displays, Samsun’s AMOLED panel proves to be better. You won’t have to shield the display using your hands or squint. The display is vivid, bright, and premium.

Chip

J7 Pro has the Exynos 7870 chipset with eight Cortex A3 cores, the same chipset used on the J7. While it is super power-efficient, it would have been better if Samsung use the higher-grade Exynos 7880 for the J7 Pro.

The phone can handle day-to-day stuff. But the sloth still happens here and there. For example, you will notice that the fingerprint sensor takes quite a bit of time to register and apps load longer. The phone isn’t exactly snappy but it can certainly do the job. Lower bandwidth memory is used, resulting in a noticeable difference.

All in all, right away, you will not be disappointed with the Galaxy J7 Pro. But do expect that after a few months, it will slow down. And it seems like other Android phones also have this symptom.

The good news is Samsung designed the dated chip quite well. Despite its low benchmark scores, the Galaxy J7 Pro still has enough power for gaming. There are occasional hiccups, especially with 3D games. However, this doesn’t stop users from having a good gaming session. Of course, arcade games perform better. But, lag is almost non-existent. During long gaming sessions, the device won’t get hot thanks to the 14nm manufacturing process.

RAM – Internal storage

The Galaxy J7 Pro comes in two variants. One has 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage while the other has 3GB RAM but with 64GB internal storage. You can save some money by purchasing the 32GB version and expand the phone’s storage via a microSD slot.

Battery

This phone has a big battery, for sure. Its 3600mAH battery can easily last more than a day. After it goes through the PCMark battery test, the result suggests that it takes the battery 14 hours and 39 minutes to drop from 80% to 20%.

On regular usage, each charge can last you from 16 to 18 hours. This is certainly among the smartphones with the best battery.

Camera

Besides performance, J7 Pro and J7 Max also share the same camera set up. The phone has a 13MP camera with f/1.7 aperture and Samsung’s ISOCELL sensor. The image quality is, in fact, identical to that of the J7 Max. This means that this smartphone is one of the best camera phones.

The smartphone products great photos with good details in spaces with enough light. The white balance is good as well. In low light, photos are still bright but suffer a loss in detail.

Accommodating the rear camera is a single LED flash. There are some changes here and there with the camera interface but nothing substantial. It still has the traditional quick-launch of Samsung by double-tapping the home button. Samsung also adds in new swipe gestures.

You can swipe down to switch between the two cameras. Swiping left will bring up the filter panel while swiping right will take you to a shooting mode selector.

There is an issue with the HDR. To turn it on or off, you have to do it manually. It would have been better if the HDR mode is automatic.

There is a Pro mode but it is a huge overstatement as you can only control ISO, white balance presets, exposure compensation, and a metering mode selector. There is no manual shutter speed and no manual focus.

Despite being equipped with a bright f/1.7 lens, the photos tend to be underexposed quite often. Thy dynamic range of the smartphone is a bit narrow, leading to a loss of detail. Most of the time, HDR can help with the situation. It modestly boosts the shadows, saves some detail, resulting in a very natural-looking image.

Panorama shots look decent. Despite the modest resolution, the detail is still quite high.

The Galaxy J7 Pro sports an impressive 13MP selfie camera with an f/1.9 aperture. However, it lacks autofocus. Like some other Galaxy devices, the focus plane of the J7 Pro’s front camera is too close to the phone. If you extend your arm, you will get blurry faces. A similar issue is with the 2017 J7, 2017 A7, and 2017 A5.

With the selfie camera, there is the usual face thinning, skin softening, and eye enlargement. You also have a Selfie focus mode, something like a faux bokeh portrait mode. The camera works decently in the dark, thanks to the flash.

The smartphone can record videos at a maximum of 1080p and 30fps. At this price point, it is understandable that the phone doesn’t support 4K.

The FullHD video is good with low noise and a decent amount of detail. Colors look good too. But it would have been better if they are a bit more saturated.